Aedes albopictus and Aedes japonicus - two invasive mosquito species with different temperature niches in Europe

Abstract

Background Aedes albopictus and Ae. japonicus are two of the most widespread invasive mosquito species that have recently become established in western Europe. Both species are associated with the transmission of a number of serious diseases and are projected to continue their spread in Europe.MethodsIn the present study, we modelled the habitat suitability for both species under current and future climatic conditions by means of an Ensemble forecasting approach. We additionally compared the modelled MAXENT niches of Ae. albopictus and Ae. japonicus regarding temperature and precipitation requirements.ResultsBoth species were modelled to find suitable habitat conditions in distinct areas within Europe: Ae. albopictus within the Mediterranean regions in southern Europe, Ae. japonicus within the more temperate regions of central Europe. Only in few regions, suitable habitat conditions were projected to overlap for both species. Whereas Ae. albopictus is projected to be generally promoted by climate change in Europe, the area modelled to be climatically suitable for Ae. japonicus is projected to decrease under climate change. This projection of range reduction under climate change relies on the assumption that Ae. japonicus is not able to adapt to warmer climatic conditions. The modelled MAXENT temperature niches of Ae. japonicus were found to be narrower with an optimum at lower temperatures compared to the niches of Ae. albopictus. ConclusionsSpecies distribution models identifying areas with high habitat suitability can help improving monitoring programmes for invasive species currently in place. However, as mosquito species are known to be able to adapt to new environmental conditions within the invasion range quickly, niche evolution of invasive mosquito species should be closely followed upon in future studies.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13071-016-1853-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Mapping of Aedes albopictus Abundance at a Local Scale in Italy

“…Indeed, a mean temperature of the warmest quarter equal to 25 • C represents an optimum temperature for Ae. albopictus [58]. On the other hand, the mean temperature of the coldest month was not related to Ae.…”

“…koreicus, whose invasion success may be facilitated by a spatiotemporal niche segregation with Ae. albopictus [24,31,58]. Further research is needed to lower the high uncertainty of prediction in artificial areas and to produce more accurate IMS abundance maps that are required by stakeholders for vector surveillance and control.…”

Modeled distributions ofAedes japonicus japonicusandAedes togoi(Diptera: Culicidae) in the United States, Canada, and northern Latin America

“…Maximum entropy niche modelling (Maxent) is a widely‐used approach in invasive species habitat modelling (Medley , Fischer et al , Rochlin, Ninivaggi, et al , Campbell et al , Melaun et al , Cunze et al , Johnson et al , Estallo et al ). Maxent is a machine‐learning algorithm which uses presence‐only data to model species distributions (Phillips et al ) and that compares favorably with similar methods (Elith et al , Phillips et al ), even when limited presence data is available (Elith et al , Phillips et al ).…”

Erratum to: Aedes albopictus and Aedes japonicus - two invasive mosquito species with different temperature niches in Europe

“…After the publication of our paper [1] we realised that, due to erroneous labelling of some figure files, Figs. 3, 4 and 5 appear out of order and are associated with wrong figure legends.…”